In the Capital City of the Great Sage Dynasty.
The Prime Minister's duty office.
Sandalwood incense curled through the air.
Beyond the window lay the flourishing Capital City.
Yet inside, it was like an ice cellar.
Prime Minister Li Zhen, an old man whose former students and old associates filled the realm.
Now sat stiffly behind his broad rosewood desk like a walking corpse drained of all life.
A shade of ashen white showed through his face.
His age-spotted hands gripped the arms of the Grand Tutor's chair tightly, his knuckles whitening from the force, trembling faintly.
Spread out on the desk was an imperial edict.
It was the edict declaring the Crown Prince's ascension in Qinghai City!!
As this edict entered the Capital City.
In but a short time, batch after batch of people had died in the capital of the Great Sage Dynasty.
Every one of them had been ministers who supported the imperial family's legitimate line.
And the source of it all sat directly across from him.
Master Xu, dressed in a Daoist robe washed pale but spotless as snow, sat quietly in an ordinary huanghuali round-backed chair.
His face still retained its youthful appearance, his skin smooth and clear.
Only those eyes were as deep as a ten-thousand-year cold pond.
The seemingly ordinary horsetail whisk in his hand hung with silver threads.
It radiated an invisible, lethal threat.
"Prime Minister Li."
Master Xu finally spoke, his voice calm and unruffled, yet cold to the extreme.
"Jianhong is without virtue. Heaven's Mandate has shifted."
"Yet a nation cannot go a day without a ruler. Among the imperial clan, Prince of Linchuan Commandery is intelligent and benevolent, fit to inherit the throne. Draft the edict."
Li Zhen dearly wished to throw back his head and laugh three times,